Engaging Ideas - 11/11

A collection of recent stories and reports to make you think about how to make progress on divisive issues.

Every week we curate stories and reports on complex issues. This week: Looking forward towards a democracy that works for everyone. Horserace polling, the tempting treat that missed the mark. How to talk politics with your enemy, plus what the election means for health care, K12 and higher education policies.

Democracy

Toward
a Democracy that Works for Everyone (On the Agenda)Public
Agenda President Will Friedman comments on the 2016 election and our work
moving forward: We stand more committed than ever to doing our part to build a
democracy that works for everyone.

Here’s
how the next president can start healing America.
(Huffington Post)Dan
Glickman, Former Congressman and Secretary of Agriculture and a Senior Fellow
at the Bipartisan Policy Institute, writes: The public should not tolerate four
more years of gridlock, no matter who wins on November 8. So what should the
next White House administration and the 115th Congress do to rebuild its
standing in the eyes of the American people? First, the next president should create
a cabinet with a diversity of political views to represent both the left, right
and middle.

Public Opinion/ Polling

Update: Horse
Race Polling: Resist the Sweet Treat (Medium)
PA alumna Amber Ott writes: In the aftermath of yesterday's election, we are
reminded what happens when the horse race? - even when scrutinized
using sophisticated technology, big data and modeling? - overshadows
everything else. As we wrote in February, polls are not designed to be
predictive. They capture a moment in time, and things can happen between a
survey and election day, including a shift in the electorate itself. Uncovering
the values that underlie candidate preference is what makes public opinion
research meaningful. Effective campaigns use this information to craft coherent
strategies. Today, many wish we better understood the forces that propelled Mr.
Trump to victory. Going forward, let’s dedicate ourselves not just to
understanding these forces but also communicating the right and wrong ways to
use public opinion research.

7
experts try to explain how the polls missed Donald Trump’s victory (Vox)Trump
drew many new believers into the political process for the first time; the
likely voter screens appear to have assumed that they would not actually show
up to vote on Tuesday. As a result, polls with strong likely voter screens may
have underestimated his strength. Trump’s victory was missed by basically
everybody in the polling industry. And that sets up a question: How did the
pollsters so badly whiff on an election with such high stakes? The dust is still
settling, but I talked to seven experts in political science and polling for
their responses. Here’s what I learned.

Community Engagement

Watch:
How to Talk Politics With Your Worst Enemy (Whom You Love) (Only
Human)Chuck
and Brenda disagree about pretty much everything. When they got married, most
of their friends didn’t expect them to last longer than two years. They’ve now
been together through four decades and seven different presidents. How’d they
do it? They admit their own flaws. Brenda makes a killer lasagna. And they both
know that neither Hillary Clinton nor Donald Trump will be changing their
diapers when they’re 90.

Higher Education & Workforce Development

Can-Do-Hub:
The GitHub of Competencies (The New England Journal of Higher
Education)Imagine
having a GitHub profile of competencies. An employer could immediately,
visually take in the depth of a candidate’s profile in different areas—both her
foundational skills as well as her other technical skillsets. What if we could
click on that darker colored square in the grid and immediately view artifacts
from the candidate’s past experiences that best illustrate that competency? Or,
in other cases, we might see that a company or institution validated that
particular competency. A profile of competencies with the visual impact of a
GitHub profile would make immediately clear to employers a candidate’s capacity
and potential.

Commentary:
Leading Transfer Efforts: Two-Year and Four-Year Leaders Need to Collaborate to
Succeed (The EvoLLLution)Recently,
a faculty chair shared that it suddenly occurred to him that we (community
colleges) don’t offer our transfer degrees on our own but on behalf of the
universities to which our students transfer, based on the university’s
requirements. This was an epiphany to that senior faculty member who never
considered that our programs and courses should align with the course guides of
the university that awards the baccalaureate degree, that majors and transfer
degrees (AA and AS) didn’t stand alone.

Is
Neuroeducation the Key to Online Retention? (eCampus News)Neuroeducation
indicates that by helping students regulate their thinking and performance,
institutions will be poised to mitigate the diminishing retention rates of
online students.

New and
Returning Governors and Higher Ed (Inside Higher Ed)This
table lists the winning gubernatorial candidates in Tuesday's elections and
their pledges on higher education. Candidates with an asterisk were incumbents.

Health Care

No
Affordable Care Act? Health Insurers Weren’t Expecting That (The
New York Times) More
than 100,000 Americans rushed to buy health insurance under the Affordable Care
Act on Wednesday, the biggest turnout yet during this year’s sign-up period,
the day after the election of Donald J. Trump, who has promised to repeal the
law. The figure, announced by the Obama administration, added to a sense of
whiplash about the law, and underscored the magnitude of any change. Despite
all the criticisms about the law coming from President-elect Trump and his
allies, millions of people now depend on it for coverage.

What's
become of doctors? (Crain's New York)Thirty
years ago, more than three in four doctors owned their practices. In New York
today, about one in four do. What happened? Crain's tells the story with mini
profiles of six doctors and how they have adapted to survive.